www.musicweek.com INTERVIEWMILLERWILLIAMS
14.09.12 Music Week 41
Kobalt’s new creative SVP discusses the commercial realities of publishing and the power of the song
PUBLISHING BY PAUL WILLIAMS
s Miller Williams was driving in Los Angeles a few years ago his attention suddenly switched to the record coming
IT’S MILLER TIME! A
LEFT Rae of sunshine: Miller Williams’ first breakthrough success as Global Talent managing director
on the radio: Like A Star by Corinne Bailey Rae. Not only was it a top tune, but it blasting out of
his car stereo at that very moment was recognition of just how far the song and its writer/singer had come since he first encountered them in his office at Global Talent Publishing. “That was the first song I ever heard when I
got the demo sent through of this girl from Leeds and I sat there and thought, ‘Wow, it’s gone from that and now I’m driving in Los Angeles and it’s on one of the big radio stations in LA,’” recalls Williams, who started in a new role at the end of last month as Kobalt’s London-based senior vice president, creative. Some three years passed after he signed her to a publishing deal before Bailey Rae’s first EMI single came out and then a self-titled debut album that became a global seller and secured four Grammy nominations. She stands as the first example of a songwriter signed and then nurtured under his watch as Global Talent managing director long before they hooked up with a record company. Also on that list are Justin Young, now the
frontman of The Vaccines but then a solo artist going under the name of Jay Jay Pistolet, LMFAO who were signed three years before their big breakthrough, and Ellie Goulding who Williams recalls was signed by Global towards the end of 2009 and only the following year won a record deal with Polydor. All four acts are perfect illustrations of publishers making an important part of the running ahead of a record label coming on board. But for an independent, unable to match the bigger publishers in the cheque book stakes for more established names, it is just reality. “That was part and parcel of what we had to do at Global because we were a small company,” he says. “It’s a case of we were never set up to compete with the majors in terms of the big money deals so you have to cut your cloth accordingly and I had the good fortune to have
good scouts working for me and the good fortune to find good people, beginning with Corinne. It worked really well.” His move to Kobalt, some six months after his
12-year tenure at Global came to an end, now places him at a much more significant music publisher, but one where he will still look to find writers at the early stages of their career. “If I can continue to do so it strengthens the
company and shows that Kobalt not only provides a great service but it is also a home for people who may be need a bit of nurturing and develop their writing career to get to the point of having a record deal or major success as a writer and producer,” he says. “I always got great satisfaction out of doing that and we were successful at Global and hopefully I can carry on doing that.” Although Kobalt is a new company to him in
many ways it is very familiar as it acts as a sub- publisher to Global Talent in a variety of territories, including the US, meaning before arriving he already had good relationships with many of the team. As for his own role, that sees him reporting
into LA-based executive vice president Sas Metcalfe and working as part of the London creative team alongside Nick Robinson, Sam Winwood and Sian Walter.
“It was a lot easier to make a living if you were a good writer because even if you didn’t get the single off an album you could still make a decent living by having an album cut. Now that doesn’t exist” MILLER WILLIAMS
At a time when the world’s biggest publishing
company has been assembled with the Sony/ATV-led consortium takeover of EMI Publishing and the ongoing expansion of BMG Chrysalis, Williams argues with Kobalt that – while it clearly has a much bigger roster than Global – it is manageable enough that all the writers can get some attention. They range from writer/producer superstars like Dr Luke, Max Martin and Shellback to a UK line-up that includes Infectious’s Mercury-tipped Alt-J and Mercury Records singer-songwriter Jake Bugg who has been working with fellow Kobalt signing Iain Archer.
Although the likes of Dr Luke can more than
“I had the good fortune to have good scouts working for me and the good fortune to find good people, beginning with Corinne” MILLER WILLIAMS
take care of themselves, for songwriters in general these days Williams recognises the outlook is very tough. “It’s very hard to be a writer now, irrespective of all the mergers and everything because of the drop-off in album sales,” he says. “I go back way back to when I started in the music industry it was a lot easier to make a living if you were a really good writer because even if you didn’t get the single off an album you could still make a decent living by having an album cut, but now that doesn’t exist. How many albums sell as many as Beyoncé and Adele’s? Not many. It’s a very small list so if you’ve written half or a third of a song that was never a single off an album that sells a 100,000 or even 300,000 copies there’s not a lot in it to make a living.” But for Williams, who started his music career
at Nashville publisher Tree Music in his native US, the challenge remains as it always has: to find great quality writers. “You have to find who you believe are the best and who in terms of production are ahead of the game as much as you can and be selective,” he says. “Kobalt have a very small core of writers that they publish and you don’t need to have a huge number of writers. If you have a huge number the odds are some of them will do very well, but I was always a person who preferred a small roster of people because I like to be hands-on.” That hands-on approach in the past has helped to turn virtual unknowns into big stars and Williams will be looking to do more of the same in this new job.
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